


The One You Really Love

by qodarkness



Series: 69 Love Songs [3]
Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Magnetic Fields, Songfic, Two songs because they were companion pieces in my head
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-04
Updated: 2019-11-04
Packaged: 2021-01-22 21:22:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21308812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qodarkness/pseuds/qodarkness
Summary: No one would ever accuse Queen Sansa of not being dutiful.
Relationships: Sansa Stark/Beren Tallhart, Theon Greyjoy/Sansa Stark
Series: 69 Love Songs [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1530320
Comments: 1
Kudos: 37





	1. The One You Really Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No one would ever accuse Queen Sansa of not being dutiful.

No one would ever accuse Queen Sansa of not being dutiful. Dutifully she returned to Winterfell alone, accepted the crown, sat upon her lonely throne. Dutifully she listened to those northern Lords and Ladies that were left, appointed new ones to fill the empty halls of too many keeps, ensured supplies from the south until the North could support itself, then sorted out taxes and treaties and alliances until the North’s somewhat shaky independence was shored up and her territory became secure.

Dutifully she accepted the advice she was given that, to ensure succession and the continuing loyalty of her bannermen, she should marry a northern Lord or Lord’s son. It took some time to find a suitable partner (so many houses had lost most, if not all, of their men in the wars) but at last Beren Tallhart proved acceptable to all, including Queen Sansa. He was a second son and would not inherit, and so was willing to move to Winterfell and take on the Stark name, giving up any lands and titles for the chance to father the heir to the North. He was tall and handsome and young and knew some small part of what had happened to Sansa, enough to make him vow to try to be good to the Queen whose name he would bear. 

Dutifully, before the heart tree, she took his hand in marriage (if not his name). After the feast, she preceded him to her chambers, carefully put aside her wedding dress and lay upon the bed. Beren was not an unkind man and was already half in love with his Queen, beautiful and young and clever and kind, and he tried to make it good for her but there was too much he did not know. Sansa waited until he slept before she let her silent tears fall. 

She bore him three children and when the last was born, she told him that he was free to satisfy his desires elsewhere. “I don’t want elsewhere,” he said (although there had already been elsewhere because what else was he to do?). “I want you. I want the Queen.”

“I have done my duty, my lord,” replied Sansa. “There is only elsewhere.”

“I want you,” he said stubbornly as she turned away from him, walked to the door. “I want you to love me. More than you love a dead man, at least.” 

She did not turn back to him, though her hand reached out and steadied her for a moment against the doorframe. “We all want things we cannot have,” said Sansa evenly and walked away without looking back at him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hated how alone Sansa was at the end of S8. Also yep, making Beren Tallhart her husband again post-S8 (there are so few families/men of the right age left in the North that he’s kind of it...). I originally wrote a lot more of this fic, but realised it isn’t needed - the story I got from this song was bleak and spare. But fortunately there is a companion piece...
> 
> Lyrics to The One You Really Love:
> 
> I do believe our love's in danger I might as well be loving air  
You look at me like I'm a stranger You look at me like I'm not there  
I gaze into your eyes of blue but their beauty is not for me You're  
Thinking on someone who's gone You're dreaming of the one you really love  
I made…  
Thinking on someone who's gone You're dreaming of the one you really love  
I made you mine, or so it seemed Though he is dead he haunts your dreams  
I might as well be two ft. tall You never will love me at all  
You're dreaming of the corpse you really love


	2. Parades Go By

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I waited,” he said.

Theon would call it sleeping, if someone asked him, for it was akin to that. Not that anyone asked him, for no-one tended to speak to the dead.

He stayed within the darkness, knowing nothing of time passing, only knowing that it did. Sometimes the world would be loud enough that he would rise through the dark to a light that seemed tinted moss green. He could see nothing but that light, but he would hear, as if through water, the sounds of Winterfell. Feasts, he thought. Tourneys. Celebrations. She was there, a flame within the green light. Queen Sansa, he thought, a bright silver band atop the flame of the light of her. She would be a good Queen. A great Queen. He sometimes wished he could see more, but he was dead and everything was far away from him except that he had loved and lost her and the song of her life whispered him always back to the thing that felt like sleep.

Life went on above him. Theon sometimes wondered whether he should go on, but he did not. He knew that there was another place, that the other dead went forward and that perhaps he too should go there, but he did not. He did not particularly want to, but the only time he thought to try, he felt a great weight upon his chest, as if something pinned him there, in the green light and the darkness and the light of her flame. He stopped trying then, and settled back into the dark.

He did not know how long it had been, how many times he had drifted back into the green light to see her, but this time when he rose into it, the light bent and shifted around her flame and it grew steadily brighter until she was suddenly there, sharp and clear against the light. For a moment, she was an old woman, hair white, face fiercely beautiful, still tall and standing straight. And then she was Sansa, his Sansa, as he had seen her that last night in Winterfell, when they had shared their last meal together. His last meal, forever.

“Theon,” she said and everything sharpened and he was young again and whole, what he had wanted to be for her on that night, what he had never been allowed to be.

“I waited,” he said.

Tears sprang to her eyes then and she looked away from him. “I didn’t,” she said. “I was Queen. I had to have heirs.”

“Your heart waited,” he said softly and she nodded, and when she looked back at him, her eyes shone like the stars.

“Always,” she said. She leaned forward then, her lips touching his so gently and then stronger and the feel of that was worth all the life that had and hadn’t been. He felt her fingers fumble for a moment at his chest and then take the Stark pin from where it nestled in his armour, where she had placed it, so long ago.

The weight was lifted from him, and he felt only the touch of her lips on his, the clasp of her hand as, together, they went on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These two sets of lyrics decided to inform me that they were point and counterpoint - Sansa loving Theon even though he’s dead; Theon waiting for Sansa after death. Which is good, because I needed the second to make the first one okay. 
> 
> Lyrics to Parades Go By:
> 
> I'll linger here your ring upon my finger dear and sing till dawn  
A song of you and me and what and why for time is all I have to keep  
Between these walls and half asleep the days go by a million little  
Nights and days go by and I don't mind Parades go by So many beautiful  
Parades go…  
Nights and days go by and I don't mind Parades go by So many beautiful  
Parades go by Leave me behind I'll sit and stare how could I venture  
Anywhere and let the centuries fall where they may but never die  
For I have loved and so I lost the world above beyond the moss


End file.
